Fun, Sun, and Education at MCCA's General Counsel InvitationalSpecial thanks to all of those who attended the 4th Annual General Counsel Invitational Golf & Spa Classic Weekend! The event, held April 19-21 at the beautiful Doral Golf & Spa Resort, included a weekend full of education, recreation, and relaxation all in support of the MCCA Lloyd M. Johnson, Jr. Scholarship program.
Veta Richardson presents the award for winning the inaugural Lawyers Cup Challenge to Trey Cloud of Jones Walker.
Many participants hit the green to participate in two golf tournaments, including our first-ever Lawyers Cup Challenge (LCC), an individual PGA-style competition sponsored by Marriott, as well as our ever-popular General Counsel Invitational (GCI) team scramble event. Congratulations to Trey Cloud of Jones Walker as the winner of the LCC event, with a gross score of 82 and a net winning score of 67. Team Altria took first place in the GCI event, shooting 7 under par resulting in a team score of 65. Team Navigant was a close second, followed by collective players from Holland+Knight, UPS, and Jones Walker coming in third.
Congratulations also to Derede McAlpin of Levick Communications, who won a 27-month lease of a Mercedes Benz R350 in a special raffle sponsored by Mercedes Benz.
Maurice Bellan, Saul Ewing; Vaughn Phillips, Shell Oil Company; and Edward (Ted) Baines, Saul Ewing.
For those who needed some extra practice before the tournament, the complimentary golf lessons at the Jim McClean Golf School sponsored by Microsoft proved to be quite helpful. And for those who just wanted to relax, the complimentary spa activities sponsored by Vault were just what the doctor ordered.
The events included a premier CLE panel, sponsored by LexisNexis, discussing how to successfully manage corporate crises. Pfizer Inc. sponsored the inaugural "Compendium of Best Practices toward Achieving Diversity in the Law Firms and Corporate Legal Departments." The compendium summarized many effective practices, and brought together innovative ideas on how to improve diversity and work together to help improve the legal community as a whole.
The weekend culminated with the annual awards dinner, sponsored by Akerman Senterfitt, where participants enjoyed a night of networking and dancing to the sweet sounds of some local Latin jazz.
Thornton Williams of Williams Wilson & Sexton, P.A. taking a practice swing.
MCCA wants to thank all of our event sponsors: Marriott International, Akerman Senterfitt, American Airlines, Microsoft, Vault, LexisNexis, Mercedes-Benz, Coors, FedEx Express, ALM, White & Case, Pfizer, Seyfarth Shaw, Wilson Williams & Sexton, Holland & Knight, Shell, and Altria. Thanks also to the many other participants who came to support the event. You truly made it a grand experience!
If you are interested in participating in or sponsoring the 5th Annual General Counsel Invitational Golf Classic, please contact Jennifer Chen at 202-739-5902 or email jenchen@mcca.com.
New Study Finds That Blacks Admitted Under Affirmative Action Do Better in College Than Legacies Who Receive Admissions Preferences
Proponents of race-sensitive admissions programs often make the point that most colleges and universities give admissions preferences to athletes and legacies who otherwise would not be admitted. Therefore, the position is that there is nothing wrong in giving a leg up to black applicants who historically have not been given a fair shake in the admissions process.
Now two sociologists at Princeton University have found that students who received admissions preferences because of their ancestors' relationship with the institution are more likely to run into academic trouble than African Americans who were admitted under affirmative action admissions programs. They say that legacy admits whose SAT scores and high school grade point averages are far below the mean for all entering students are more likely to get poor grades in college than black students admitted under race-sensitive admissions. The study also found that at the colleges and universities where legacy admits seem to have the most advantage, the dropout rates for legacies are the highest.
In contrast, blacks who received admissions preferences did not have similar levels of poor grades and were just as likely as other blacks to stay in college and earn a degree.
The study, which is published in the journal Social Problems, did find that at the selective colleges they surveyed, 77 percent of black students were the beneficiaries of affirmative action, whereas 48 percent of all legacies benefited from admissions preferences. DB
Summarized and reprinted with permission from The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education Weekly Bulletin, April 12, 2007. (For more information, visit http://www.jbhe.com.)
From the July/August 2007 issue of Diversity & The Bar®